20 March 2018

Improving in Jiu Jitsu as a Beginning Student.

What follows is aimed
specifically at white through blue belt, but I hope there are useful tips for
all belt and skill levels.

It is pretty rare that
anyone comes to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu without the intention of getting better at
it. There are the occasional people who just want to have something to do, who
just enjoy the camaraderie of a good academy and don’t put undue pressure on themselves
to get better at an accelerated rate (perhaps, counter intuitively, I have
noticed that sometimes these folks improve the quickest). For the most
part, it seems like people come to the Jiu Jitsu academy with some goal of
being very good at the art. The reasons are myriad, but the end point for most
is the same. Jiu-jitsu people want to achieve extreme proficiency. Whatever
kind of student you are, casual or ambitious, here are some pieces of advice
I have to improve your game.

Private Lessons

This will seem
self-serving. I’m a black belt and I can make a decent buck giving private lessons. “He’s just advertising now,” you might think, or
even say. Here is the thing though, I still take private lessons. I suppose I am an expert on BJJ,
but I am not an authority. I am pretty good at my game, but my game isn’t the
totality of BJJ. I go to other experts to help me make my game more robust.
I’ve always tried to supplement class instruction with private lessons from
people better than me. Private lessons have the benefit of giving a student one
on one time, with and the focused attention of the coach.

Fundamentals Class.

Does your academy have a
fundamentals class? It does? Go to it as often as you can. The keys to the
success of almost everything in Jiu Jitsu lie in that class. That is to say,
success lay in the basics. There, you will be introduced to the most reliable
techniques, key principles of body mechanics, and have the opportunity to
practice them over and over again.

I’ve seen advanced belts
stuck in headlocks, and kesa gatame, not only unable to escape, but not even
knowing where to begin. I’m only guilty of minor hyperbole when I say most of the core mechanics of all escapes can be found
in your fundamental headlock escapes. These often don’t get much coverage in
your advanced classes, but you get to practice these basics over and over again
in Fundamentals. Mastery begins with sound fundamentals.

The following clip is pretty MMA related, but what you will see, over and over, and over, is very basic jiu jitsu honed to perfection. Almost every BJJ related thing you see, you will learn in your Fundamentals class.

How to Learn and Functionalize a New Technique.

1.Pay attention
to the coach’s details. She or he, isn’t giving them for no reason. Nothing is
more frustrating for a coach than the moment immediately following “Got it?
Need to see it again” getting head shakes and verbal negatives only to see
that, in fact, folks didn’t get it, and needed to see it again. Coaches are
often more than willing to accept the problem of not “getting it” is often theirs, but please don’t
say you get if you don’t.I have not met
a coach who was loath to demonstrate Jiu Jitsu to a student.I haven’t heard “Are you fucking stupid,”
seriously posed, since I was a Wing Chun student.

2.The Steps.
Coaches are often building road maps for muscle memory and the formation of
sound structures for their students.They
will break a move down into steps. The steps become an order of operations that
will become ingrained, and form good habits. Observe the steps, and follow
them. If you are a white, or blue belt, or even a purple belt, don’t try to
improve on the steps, don’t think, “I can skip this and get straight to X.”
Chances are you actually can’t. The steps often anticipate obstacles and common
opponent reactions. That is not to say you can’t improve on the technique in
the future, but when you are first learning it, its always good to remember
that your coach comes from a line of people who taught them, and is also the
product of their own experience with the material. The steps, or order of operations,
are a refuge in rough spots. They reduce decision time but limiting choices.
All you have to think about is achieving the next step. Once that is achieved,
you move on to the next step, and so on. As you build a smooth technique, it
will seem as if the steps have disappeared (in the same way concrete positions
disappear), but their mechanics and basic structures will be there still.

Here is an example of how
focusing on the steps your coach lays out can help you perform under
pressure.A lot of my approach to Jiu
Jitsu and skills mastery can be attributed to the Steps mindset I learned and
cultivated under Marcelo Monteiro. Marcelo was a De la Riva guy, and there were
always a lot of steps and rules. What I found was that by following the steps
laid out for establishing a position, half-guard say, I was reducing the size
of the decision tree I had to deal with, and establishing small goals that are
much easier to focus on while under the pressure of a live roll or competition.For instance, Marcelo had a several steps to
regaining the advantage from bottom half. If my opponent was on top, and had
head and under-hook control they had the advantage. Marcelo’s steps to get out
of that situation were:

Don’t worry if you don’t
know what that terminology means, what I want to highlight is the refuge the
steps became in live rolls. Being in a terrible place is rough, and the end
goal (being out of said terrible place) can seem enormously daunting. Little steps
toward the ultimate goal however are much easier to focus on, and often
starting the process, step one, can help you build to the next small goal,
until eventually you have completed the chain of steps. The order of operations
is your refuge; the steps your coaches are giving you are the order of
operations. Pay attention. I have taken that step conscious approach to every
academy I’ve trained at since.

As a final point in this
section, if you find a particular movement too troublesome, try breaking that
movement in to steps. If you can’t do it, ask your coach to help you.

Slow down.

Read that
again, I mean it. Or as I think I have heard Jay Jack put it, “Slow the fuck
down.”

Your coach has just given
you the steps, demonstrated the technique and sent you off to practice. How do
you remember the steps? How do you ingrain that technique properly into your
muscle memory?

Don’t start with speed. Slow Down. Trying to do a new thing with speed is a great
way to start missing steps, losing the body mechanics, and generally building
bad habits or no habits. That is building failure into the new move.

While you learn and
practice a new technique you should focus on performing each component
perfectly and acquiring the quality of smooth movement (be sure to ask
questions if you are having trouble). Speed will come with internalization of
the steps and the increasing smoothness of your movement. Do not worry if your
training partner is faster or smoother than you. Maybe they have trained the
move before, or have been training longer, and have some idea of their own
body’s capacity for movement.

Progressive Resistance

You have been practicing
a new technique, you are mastering the steps, you are getting smooth, now how
do you apply that technique in live rolling? Do you try your new flying
triangle on a brown belt? You can, but don’t expect to build on the timing and
intuitions of the attack there, your new flying triangle is bound to get stuffed in that context. You build your attacks with progressively
harder people, but you don’t start building mastery with the toughest, and most
technical training partners in your gym. You try new techniques on people your
skill level and lower. The higher your rank the more you should be able to make
this kind of focused training really work. A purple, brown, or black belt can
direct the roll to the same situation again, and again against white and blue
belt. However anyone can use the
principle of progressive training. You begin building the technique in a
situation of alive rolling, where resistance is present and will keep you
honest, but where you can concentrate on doing the technique. Once you are
confident in the technique in that that setting, you begin to try to apply it
at the next skill level.This kind of
progression is often its own trouble shooting. Timing improves, the mechanics
tighten, you see the common obstacles, and you either figure out the answers to
those obstacles, or you ask a coach who has. Eventually you are applying the
technique to equally skilled peers and even people who are generally better than you.
Progressive resistance doesn’t just build muscle.

Trust the Jiu Jitsu

This is something that
comes up a lot. People get shown a technique, they practice it in class, and
then, in live rolls, do a lot of other things that aren’t really sound Jiu Jitsu. They do everything
but the technique. They panic at resistance or the initial failure of the
technique and go to things that may occasionally work, or that give an illusion
of progression toward some end goal, passing the guard, escaping the mount, achieving
side control, whatever, but will get them no where against opponents possessing
superior skills or attributes.Rejecting
Jiu Jitsu is not the path to improved Jiu Jitsu.

If you think you are at a
good school (a topic of another essay perhaps) then you should trust what your
coaches are telling you. As a blue belt, or a white belt, you aren’t yet an
expert in Jiu Jitsu, or even in what works for your body. Your coaches have the
benefit of thousands of hours of learning, rolling, thinking about Jiu Jitsu
and teaching. You should definitely ask a lot of questions. Ask for help. “Can
you help me figure out X?” Coaches are pretty generous with their time, and
want you to get better. If they have time, they will help you figure it out. If
they don’t have time, consider that private lesson!

Here are two further
ideas suggested by friends who reviewed this piece that I thought were great
ideas.

Dan Neumann, a Jay Jack
Academy teammate, suggested the use of emulation as an aid in technical
development. You like Jiu Jitsu, you probably watch a lot of competition, you
probably have players, in MMA, no-gi, or gi competition that you admire and
whose game you are amazed by. It actually isn’t a bad idea to try to play like
someone you know to be an exemplar of the art. Is there a rule that says this
exemplar can’t be your own coach or someone in your academy? No, not at all.
However, I have found that people often utilize models outside their academy
for this emulative experimentation.I
think the reason for this is that we actually don’t get to watch our teammates
or coaches roll in practice. We are too busy training ourselves. I won’t tell
you who Dan said his models were, but one of my early models was Minotauro
Noguiera. At the time he had probably the best heavy weight BJJ for MMA around.
We were built similarly, small-framed heavyweights (230-240 lbs, which can be
small in modern heavyweight divisions). His style of play was pretty similar to
stuff I was doing at Marcelo Monteiro’s academy in Indianapolis. The similarity
made some sense, they were friends and trained together in and under the
Carlson Gracie umbrella. I tried to do what he did. I got my ass kicked a lot,
but in so doing, I learned a lot about escaping bad positions, and I also
rolled with people, upper ranks and people who had trained longer, who
understood what I was trying to do and helped me tweek this or that position,
or sweep. You probably have someone whose game you like, even if you don’t
understand it fully. Try it out.

Alex Trafton, a friend
who does high-end security and trains grappling for a robust set of
applications, suggested, cross training. This is a great idea. How much you can
do is probably time, finance and location dependent but it is worth your time to do however much you can do. Not everyone can be as thorough as Alex is with his
cross-training (he shoots, he boxes, he grapples in a variety of systems, he
has trained extensively in Muay Thai, and probably a bunch of stuff I am
missing). Not everyone has the time or money to do as much as they would like, or train at a location that can provide many different arts to explore. You can always do a bit of cross training though. So, try other grappling arts out if you can, and definitely drop into to other BJJ academies, as that experience can often be as different as training in another art. Across BJJ schools you will see a lot of similarities, but there are different styles of play, different games that, whether you adopt them into your own game, are good to be exposed to. Call ahead, see if it is okay to drop in for a class or open mat (it almost always is, there is often a reasonable drop-in fee) and explore!

1 Comments:

About Me

A biologist who turned into a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu coach and black belt. I have been lucky enough to train with a variety of great coaches, sensei and teammates.
Of note, Marcello Monteiro, in Indianapolis Indiana. Jay Jack of Portland Maine, and Eduardo Benjamin of Bangor Maine.
I am interested in Evolutionary biology, ecology and conservation.